Aging Changes in Cardiovascular Structure and Function

Abstract

With aging there is an increasing prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CV) which includes a group of diseases and disorders such coronary heart disease (CHD), hypertension, congestive heart failure, valvular heart disease, cardiac arrhythmias, peripheral vascular disease, and stroke. The etiology of the age-associated increase in CV is attributed to primary biological aging, adverse lifestyle, the environment, disease, socioeconomics, and other external factors that interact detrimentally with the biological aging. This chapter reviews a number of age-associated changes in the cardiovascular system including aging changes in the vasculature, physiological and clinical effects of vascular aging, aging changes in cardiac structure and resting function, impact of age and disease on the cardiovascular response to exercise and other stressors, aerobic exercise capacity and aging, mechanisms of impaired left ventricular (LV) function during maximal aerobic exercise in older adults, age-associated changes in the electrocardiogram (ECG), and propensity for development of arrythmias such as atrial fibrillation in older adults. A better understanding of the age-associated alterations in cardiac and vascular structure and function may lead to the development of new novel therapies to decrease the prevalence of CV disease and to attenuate the changes in cardiac and vascular function that accompany advancing age.